Very sad. I suspect that only older folks, for the most part, really care. And they’re often not in a position to fund upkeep or renovation. Younger people just see buildings as “things,” and don’t think twice about tearing them down. Older people tend to get more nostalgic as time goes on, perhaps using those older “things” as a reminder of what once was. We justify such thinking by saying things were better “back then,” and we need to keep the memories alive. And of course we’re right. But seriously, I really do find it a shame that things were so much better built, there was pride in things that people owned, and some of those things helped keep us “grounded.” Today, there’s little sense of community in most areas, families disperse and rarely get together, and commercialization has taken over to an extent that it would seem almost impossible to bring back “the way it was.” Even communication between human beings has been reduced to 140 characters, and “news” consists of 5-second sound bytes in the form of a leading, rhetorical question. And we wonder what’s wrong ….

GS
"Ye hear of wars in far countries, and you say that there will soon be great wars in far countries, but ye know not the hearts of men in your own land."